Customer call centers, or simply, “call centers,” are often the first point of contact for customers seeking direct assistance from manufacturers and service vendors. Call centers are reachable by telephone, including data network-based telephone services, such as Voice-Over-Internet (VoIP), and provide customer support and problem resolution. Although World Wide Web- and email-based customer support are becoming increasingly available, call centers still offer a convenient and universally-accessible forum for remote customer assistance.
The timeliness and quality of service provided by call centers is critical to ensuring customer satisfaction. However, customers become less tolerant of delays, as the amount of delay increases. Minimizing delays is crucial, even when caller volume is high. Further, customers may experience frustration due to ineffective agents that fail to resolve callers' issues or concerns, agents that are unable to understand the position of the caller. Further, agents and callers that do not understand each other's speech or explicit or implicit communications can hinder the communication between the agent and caller, as well as frustrate both parties. Caller experience can be optimized by adjusting the responses of an agent or automated response system based on caller and agent traits.
Currently, call centers utilize information received directly from a caller or gathered from the caller without a prompt, such as from caller ID, in an attempt to shorten call times and timely satisfy caller requests and concerns. However, current call centers fail to collect, analyze, and use voice characteristics from a caller's speech to increase call center efficiency, agent success, and caller satisfaction.
Accordingly, a system and method to identify and utilize agent and caller traits is needed. Preferably, the system and method will use the traits to increase efficiency and effectiveness of a call center, such as during agent hiring, identity confirmation, matching agents with callers, and influencing agents so as to improve call quality metrics, such as to successfully close a transaction, as well as guide automated call handling systems to more appropriately and successfully respond to callers.